Independent business blogs are blogs that aren’t supported by an organization like a magazine, newspaper, company, or business school. Those people provide lots of great content, but they don’t need any additional exposure. In this post, every week, I bring you posts of quality from excellent bloggers that don’t get as much publicity.

This week, I’m pointing you to posts by Mary Jo Asmus, Lolly Daskal, Art Petty, Ken Downer, and Kevin Eikenberry.

From Mary Jo Asmus: When things fall apart (and they will)

“Whether you’re just beginning to lead or you’ve been a leader for a long time, you know that eventually something will go wrong. Because you are a good or even great leader, you know that you’ll be able to get through it. This is true because you have strong, healthy work (and outside of work!) relationships to support you.”

From Lolly Daskal: How to Guarantee Strong Performance Under Pressure

“You won’t generally have a say in when or how a high-pressure situation will strike, but you can learn to function well when it does by understanding what motivates and energizes you.”

From Art Petty: 4 Approaches of Great Problem-Solvers who Lead

“Develop a reputation as someone everyone can count on to tackle the big, ugly issues, and watch the doors open. Of course, it pays to have a strategy to avoid the traps while stepping up to solving or fixing the problems others actively avoid. Here are the top habits of individuals who survive and thrive as problem-solvers for the big, ugly issues in the workplace.”

From Ken Downer: Transformational Leadership: 5 Steps to a Brighter Future with Your Team

“He found a creative way to complain about a relationship gone bad, but the words of his song reveal the difference between merely managing people and truly leading them.”

From Kevin Eikenberry: Creating Calm Within Your Work Storm

“The work of a leader can get harried, rushed, and stressful. The challenge is to not let the stress negatively impact our health, our productivity, or our results. That’s why I suggest you find ways to create a circle of calm in the storm and stresses of work and leadership.”

That’s it for this week’s selections from independent business blogs. If you liked this piece you may enjoy my curation posts on this blog. Every Tuesday, “Leaders and Strategies in Real Life” helps you learn about leadership by studying what real leaders do. On Fridays you can wrap up your week with “Weekend Leadership Reading” consisting of choice articles on hot leadership topics culled from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms.

How I Select Posts for this Midweek Review

The five posts I select to share in my Midweek Review of the Independent Business Blogs are picked from a regular review of about sixty blogs I check daily and an additional twenty-five or so that I check occasionally. Here’s how I select the posts you see in this review.

They must be published within the previous week.

They must support the purpose of the blog: to help leaders at all levels do a better job and lead a better life.

They must be from an independent business blog.

As a general rule, I only select posts that stand on their own, no selections from a series.

Also as a general rule, I do not select posts that are either a book review or a book report.

I reserve the right to make exceptions to the above.

Here, on Three Star Leadership, I post things that will help a boss at any level do a better job and live a better life. At the The 360 Degree Feedback blog, I join other bloggers with posts on leadership development. And, at Wally Bock’s Writing Edge, I share tools and insights to help you write better.

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